Sleeping is dangerous!
Recently I attended (and partially hosted) a workshop on sleep in Berlin, held by Gottlieb Daimler- und Karl Benz-Stiftung. Says one of the speakers, „Sleeping is dangerous!“ Well, besides being a joke, Thorsten Schäfer was quite serious. In fact, as a medical sleep researcher from Bochum University/Germany he was less concerned with sleep as such but with disturbances of sleep. Come back to that.Some basics first. All vertebrates do it, the smaller the longer. Horses and elephants manage with two or three hours sleep a day, some mice or cats of prey snooze up to 20 hours. All in all, humans spend a third of their life in sleep. Imagine, 25 to 30 years of your life you walk away, hide in dark rooms, become more or less unconscious and mostly paralyzed – doing nothing useful really. Some mammals like dolphins sleep with one half of their brain shut down. Even insects are said to sleep, though without REM phases, which in humans signifies rapid eye movement and dreaming.
Professor Thomas Penzel, director of the charité sleep lab, led the 13. Berliner Kolloquium of the Daimler-Benz-Stiftung.
Also, the Guinness Book of World Records is in the game. A 17-year old, Randy Garner managed to stay awake for 264 hours and 12 minutes, which is just about eleven days. After that the boy slept soundly for 14 hours and 40 minutes – and had completely recovered. In 2007, 42-year-old Tony Wright outdid Randy with 266 hours sleeplessness.
Says Thorsten Schäfer, “Our body does not need sleep!” It is the brain, which requires it. “Sleep is the sleeping of the brain.” To prove his point, he points at the energy consumption of our body, which amounts to 1.3 kcal/min both while sleeping or waking.
Sleep researcher Thorsten Schäfer: "Sleep is the sleeping of the brain"
Many theories have embraced the sleep enigma. There is better learning if you let a night pass over new input. Sleeping is a construction site, says one model, in which the brain refuels with glycogen. But also, a good night’s sleep acts as psychohygenics for the brain.
Sleep disturbances, said Claudio Basetti from Universitätsspital Zürich and president of the European Society for Sleep Medicine, typically affect 10 to 20 percent of the population. These numbers comprise insomnias and diseases like restless legs syndrome. A problem affecting many people is sleeping apnoea, where people almost suffocate while the breathing stops due to severe snoring. There are also patients, who are hypersomnic and constantly tired; and lastly, there are so called parasomnias, i.e. narcoleptics or patients, who are seized by epilepsies during sleep.
Claudio Basetti from Universitätsspital Zürich: "Sleep disturbances may be symptoms of other diseases"
Here is the proof of the point: For all people with such problems, their days are dangerous, to others and themselves. They are involved in relatively more accidents or behave strangely at work. Obviously, a good sleep monitoring is appropriate for workers who work shifts or entirely during nights, drivers of train engines, truck drivers, pilots or watch persons in control stations of nuclear power plants.
While all is pursued, as scientists from Daimler AG and the Deutsche Bahn AG described, there is little knowledge, as to what really happens at the molecular level when you sleep.
It may look like oversimplistic, but at the Berlin symposium the report of Alan Pack intrigued me. He is a biochemist of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the gurus in his field, and studies sleep states in model organisms. A brilliant case is the nematode C. elegans, which suits the researchers especially well, since its brain neurons are completely known and numbered. Well, there is a host of biochemistry involved which I cannot fully grasp. But clearly, the worm sleeps, although it does not dream.
Alan Pack of the University of Pennsylvania studies sleep of the worm C. elegans
Integrated sleep centers were advocated at the closing podium session in Berlin, which are presently being pursued in the United States. In Germany, presently only a few sleep laboratories exist such as the one at the Berlin Charité University Hospital and at the University of Ulm. Quite obviously, sleep is an interdisciplinary topic, and not sleeping well is dangerous for you and your society. So, if you are in doubt and constantly overtired: Go see your doctor.
There are many things about sleep that I simply don't get, try as I might.
Consider these two scenarii with which we all are familiar:
1.) You are in a full meeting room, shortly after lunch. The air in the room is hot and stuffy and distinctly lacking oxygen. The voice of the speaker drones on and on. It is impossible to remain awake.
2.) You are in bed on a hot day. You have eaten a too late and too heavy supper. The air in the room is hot and stuffy. There is the persistent, annoying sound of a fly. It is impossible to fall asleep.
Now, am I missing something here or aren't the two situations extremely similar? How come then that regarding the ease of finding sleep (or lack tehreof), there is such a distinct difference between the two?
This has always baffled me.
Thanks for this captivating post, Reinhard! I certainly hope that some of the findings and scientists presented at the conference will make their way into "Spektrum der Wissenschaft"! It seems that the results and debates were so fascinating that they sure followed the participants right into their sleep... ;-)
Following Michael Khan, I want to add my "favourite puzzle" regarding sleep: We know that not only hunter and gatherers like the !Kung San, but also religious groups like i.e. the Amish get more sleep (about an hour a day), as they lack electric lights, television etc. The same result came out in a German case of experimental archaeology, as a family chosed to live for some time under the conditions of neolithicum. Their sleep lengthened and they said they enjoyed it and felt better now.
To me, this begs the question whether we shaped a modern culture depriving people of a certain "natural" source of well-being - and maybe even of potentials of their brains. This might be far from trivial i.e. in regard to the optimal opening hours of schools, flexitime work models etc.
@Michael Khan: I found the answer: the boring voice of the speaker. it sucks your brain empty... just engage someone to read the bible when you want to go to sleep (or the Communist Manifesto, if you are an atheist) *hahaha*
Well, good to read that sleep is getting more attention at least in large corporations, but does it need slogans such as "Sleeping is dangerous" to get peoples attention?
As society, we take peoples management of their own sleeping patterns for granted and leave people's sleeping issues to coffee, etc. until a larger problem develops. But at which stage does someone look for advice or help? I guess most people take it slighty, yet everyone has sleeping issues, being it the annual mosquite season. Here a general advice to wake up fit and reduce one parameter on sleeping analysis: A small recording of one's own sleeping patterns can help to wake up fit and not tired.
When I was young, trying to understand why I sometimes woke up fit and sometimes tired or very tired, I started recording the times of sleep and states in which I woke up. This helped me to get my own sleeping frequence and from then onwards I did not wake up tired again. Now I can manage my sleep, if I need to e.g. if you fall tired while driving and you need to continue driving, a 25 min sleep helps, a 50 min will not. Arrive alive!
Sleeping patterns and their effects on ones ability to cope with life should received much wider publicity and the few "sleep institutes" should receive much more support for this.